


Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, How I Wonder What and Where and When and WHY You Are...

by DontOffendTheBees



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: (in that Bart is free and it's implied Ken isn't evil), (the rest probably works with what actually went down), Bonding, Everyone is connected, Friendship, Gen, Introspection, Late Night Conversations, Mild Blood, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Canon, Prompt Fill, Tumblr Prompt, everything is connected, it's bart she's always covered in blood what did you expect, it's dry if that's any consolation (it certainly is to dirk), musings on the nature of holistic living, probably bad philosphy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-19 08:21:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29996544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DontOffendTheBees/pseuds/DontOffendTheBees
Summary: Small comforts in unexpected situations areexcellent. Small comforts are just what he needs at a quarter past midnight, when he’s somehow allowed himself to be picked up and driven to an abandoned car park outside of town by a strange feral person who has, on several occasions, attempted to murder him. He doubts even the clerk behind the counter would raise an eyebrow if she decided to finish the job- the fellow had the weary, jaded air of a man not being paid enough to suffer the graveyard shift.For now, though, the feral person in question seems more preoccupied with stabbing a spaw into her slushie than a knife into his face. “I got… blue,” she says, a tad redundantly, as she shovels a loaded spoonful onto her blue-stained tongue.“Raspberry.”She wrinkles her face up and eyes him dubiously. “Why’d they make it blue?”“I haven’t the foggiest.”In which strange conversations are afoot at the Circle K.Written for the 01/03/21 DGHDA Big Bang Fortnightly Free For All prompt:'trust'.
Relationships: Bart Curlish & Dirk Gently
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13
Collections: 2021 Fortnightly Free for All Collection





	Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, How I Wonder What and Where and When and WHY You Are...

**Author's Note:**

> Goodness me, has it really been a year since I posted any Dirk fic? Where does the time go.
> 
> Yes, it would seem the last time I posted anything DGHDA related was pre-lockdown, March 6th 2020- and then the world went to shit, I lost my limited spoons and whatever writing I've done since has had to very closely follow my more immediate fixations just to hold my interest. Been fandom hopping like an absolute madman over here- but it's nice, after the high of last nights Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture (and Socially Distanced Dirk) to hop in and say hi to my one true love <3
> 
> Wrote this for the DGHDA Big Bang Fortnightly Free For All prompt 'trust', and decided to give a little love to two little holistic weirdos who deserved to build a friendship. 
> 
> Enjoy <3

Dirk wouldn’t go so far as to say he’s _used_ to the twists and turns of his life. The strange events that befall him seem to get twistier and turnier every day, utterly bizarre to the core- and thus utterly _impossible_ to prepare for. Yet, compared to where he was some years ago- small and scared and overwhelmed by everything the universe could throw at him- it’s fair to say he’s found his feet somewhat. Found predictability in the frequency of the unpredictable.

Even by his rather skewed metrics for what constitutes ‘normal’, though, this is quite the unexpected turn of events for a Tuesday night.

“Whatchu get?” says a scratchy voice, the first time in nearly an hour that it’s said a word.

Dirk looks down at his dome-topped plastic cup, idly digging his spoon-ended straw- spaw?- through his slowly thawing slush drink. Sloppy swirls of pink and green muddy under his motions. “Apple and bubblegum. Or perhaps strawberry-” he takes a sip- “no, _definitely_ bubblegum.” He doesn’t need to tell her that he didn’t really _consider_ what he was ordering. She, more than just about anyone else, understands that sometimes you just let the flow take you where it will.

‘She’, of course, being none other than Bart Curlish, now perched about a foot away on the same low curb as he, ratty ballet pumps stretched out before her either side of the weathered white paint of a parking lot dividing line. The low light of the petrol station’s glowing signage backlights her, catching on her many, _many_ flyaway hairs and, thankfully _not_ glinting on the blood smears. He doesn’t know _why_ he finds it comforting that the blood’s too dry now to reflect the light, but he does. Perhaps it’s just less unsettling to know she isn’t quite fresh off a kill. Or nice to know she won’t ruin his clothes if she forgets her personal space.

Whatever it is, he’ll take what small comforts he can. Small comforts in unexpected situations are _excellent_. Small comforts are just what he needs at a quarter past midnight, when he’s somehow allowed himself to be picked up and driven to an abandoned car park outside of town by a strange feral person who has, on several occasions, attempted to murder him. He doubts even the clerk behind the counter would raise an eyebrow if she decided to finish the job- the fellow had the weary, jaded air of a man not being paid enough to suffer the graveyard shift.

For now, though, the feral person in question seems more preoccupied with stabbing a spaw into her slushie than a knife into his face. “I got… blue,” she says, a tad redundantly, as she shovels a loaded spoonful onto her blue-stained tongue.

“Raspberry.”

She wrinkles her face up and eyes him dubiously. “Why’d they make it blue?”

“I haven’t the foggiest.”

Grunting, she watches Dirk as he takes a sip, then imitates him by jamming the spoon-end of her spaw in the slush and taking a noisy slurp. “Whatever. S’nice.”

With a hum of agreement, Dirk cups both hands around his drink and tilts his face upwards, still absently sipping as the sky unfolds before his eyes. Out here the night is expansive, nearly boundless, a velvet-black void with just enough residual light pollution from the nearby town to mask all but the most determined stars from view. The nearby town that was supposed to be simply a stopgap for Dirk and company on mission, but coincidentally also provided the backdrop to Bart’s kill of the night. His and Bart’s paths are wont to improbably cross on occasion, and it gets a little bit less alarming every time. It seems they’re destined to find themselves under the same stars.

First time they’ve sat under those stars together drinking brightly coloured crushed ice and sugar, mind you. But he supposes there’s a first time for everything.

“So, what brings you to our neck of the woods?” he asks conversationally, following up his own query with a slight wince. “Well. Suppose I should ask ‘who’ brings you.”

She shrugs, the shoulder pads of her vaguely nineteen-eighties ill-fitting orange blazer lurching. Interesting garment she’s found herself wearing today; Dirk would be rather partial to it, _sans_ blood stains. “I’unno. Haven’t found ‘em yet. Whatchu doin’?”

Dirk waves his hand. “Oh, you know- gunpowder, treason and plot. And parakeets. Long story, not much to write home about.”

“What’s a parakeet?”

“It’s a type of bird- small, brightly coloured. You know, I solved _another_ case involving brightly coloured birds a couple of years ago, fun little coinkidink. Although frankly the business with the parrot smugglers was anything _but_ fun…”

Bart snorts. “You do some weird stuff, Dirk.”

“Says the person in the bloody ballet flats.”

“They’re soft,” she grumbles, looking down at her feet and swivelling her black-stained toes in a circle like she’s stretching. “Or they were. Kinda crusty now.”

“I can’t imagine they’re very handy for rough terrain. Bit _flimsy,_ possibly. Doesn’t it hurt to walk in them?”

“Been drivin’.”

“For how long?”

Bart shrugs again, this one a tad more subdued than the previous. “A while, I guess.”

They lapse into silence again, their eyes to the skies. He wonders if she sees them as he does. If sometimes, out of the corner of her eye, she sees that crackling blue web of infinite interconnectivity sprawling out where the ‘normal’ people draw their own lines between constellations.

“You could tag along with us,” he says, softly. “For a little while, at least.”

He already knows her answer, of course. But it feels right to extend the offer.

“Eh. Nah.” She looks at him sideways through heavy-lidded eyes, and he fancifully thinks that he can see that crackle of blue there, if only for millisecond. “I’m where I’m s’posed to be.” She cracks a toothy smile and punches his arm- _hard._ “But hey, ‘ey, maybe sometime that’s gonna be with you guys.”

“Yes, maybe.” Rubbing his sore arm ruefully, he offers her a thin smile. “Must go where we’re bid, I suppose.”

“Yeah. Where else would we go?”

Sighing, Dirk stabs his slushie. “I don’t know. Anywhere we like. Most people don’t follow the universe on blind faith, you know.”

“Ain’t steered me wrong yet. How ‘bout you?”

He hums. “Depends on how you define _wrong,_ I suppose. If _wrong_ is into fear, confusion and pain, it steers me wrong every other week. But you take the good with the bad. For now, I suppose I can trust that it’ll all be worth it, in the end.”

“Sure. And if it ain’t, hey, we still did what we were s’posed to do, y’know?”

Dirk taps his fingers on his cup, watching her thoughtfully. “And that’s enough for you?”

Her hesitation speaks volumes. “I guess.”

A little way away, a car zips by on the deserted road, not giving them or the station so much as a glance. Barely grazing their peripheries, and yet its vibrations twitch the threads of Dirk’s awareness. Where is that person driving? How many people have driven the very same path? How many other paths will cross theirs? The possibilities for connection are quite _literally_ endless, not even the _eccentric_ wiring of Dirk’s own holistically-gifted mind can possibly conceive of them all. That, he knows for sure. That the world is made of infinite paths, infinite connections and possibilities for connection. And that… well, that’s about all he knows.

“I’ve heard it said that proof and faith are mutually exclusive,” he muses, thoughtfully dragging lines through the thawing crystals beneath his spaw, carving something of a sloppy zen garden in the squishy surface. “There’s no call for faith if you have proof, and no call for proof if you have faith. I suppose I understand that, in principle. But wouldn’t it be nice to just _know?_ Just really know, once and for all, what it’s _all_ about. What we’re supposed to be, _who_ we’re supposed to be.”

“We do know.”

He eyes her, skeptical. _“Do_ we, though?”

“Sorta. I mean…” she swigs her drink, brow furrowed in consternation. “I dunno like, the _how_ ‘n the _why,_ but I sure know it’s _somethin’._ You feel that too, right?”

He tut-tuts, mildly frustrated. “Well, _yes,_ but-”

“And it’s- it’s _real._ You know it’s real. You know it’s there, an’ you know it’s for _us.”_ She waves her hand around a bit, an unconscious motion that flicks a glob of blue slush from her spaw at Dirk like a sticky rock from a miniature trebuchet. “I mean, you keep followin’ it. You know it’s gonna get you _somewhere._ You don’t got all the info but you know it, like I know that I can’t be locked up, and that I’m not gonna kill you.”

Dirk double takes just a tad- and thumbs the chilly trail of slush from his cheek. “You’re not?”

“You know I ain’t.”

 _“Do_ I?”

She snorts. “Wouldja be here if you thought I was?”

His mouth flops- open, closed, open again, then lips pressed into a line. “...Hm.”

Bart rolls her eyes, tapping her heel on the ground. “Dirk, I have not tried to kill you _way_ more times than I have now. Like… get over it. You know I ain’t gonna kill you. Like you know the universe is gonna put us where we gotta be.”

“ _Believing_ isn’t quite the same as _knowing.”_

“Eh, potato potato,” she says, saying the word with the exact same pronunciation both times. “Same thing.”

And then she promptly loses interest, and starts pointing at the sky and asking why one of the stars is moving.

As Dirk absently explains planes and helicopters to the possibly-not-as-feral-as-advertised person, he turns her words over in his mind like a particularly profound fidget toy. Honestly, he’d never really considered it that way. Faith and knowledge are somewhat conflicting properties, yes, and to attribute _knowledge_ to faith based on something that can be factually proven incorrect isn’t ideal. Or rather it is _an_ ideal, and an unrealistic one, and holding on too tightly to it might help you sleep at night but it’ll stunt your growth like a bad smoking habit (actually, talking of smoking habits, is _that_ why Todd is so short? He’ll have to ask him). But who’s to say what constitutes _knowledge_ where it pertains to the unknowable? The conflict of faith and knowledge amounts to little in the eyes of the faithful, for whom the result is much the same. Dirk doesn’t _know_ that he’s safe from Bart’s more _murdery_ tendencies, but in his trust, his _faith,_ he allowed himself to behave as if that safety was a given.

Acting upon _presumed_ knowledge is far from ideal. Dangerous and foolhardy at worst, an educated guess at best, and definitely something of a placeholder for the opportunity to act upon the real thing, but… well, it’s how everyone lives really, isn’t it? He more than most, perhaps, but everyone does it. Everyone wakes up, makes choices according to what they know- and when that knowledge falls short of requirements, they fill in the gaps themselves and act accordingly. And it seems to get them by just fine. Seems to send them off to bed at night in good spirits, safe in the 'knowledge' that they’ll wake up tomorrow morning to continue what they started today, though in reality any _number_ of unlikely and unfortunate things could happen in the night to keep them from seeing the sunrise. They don’t _know,_ but it’s as close to knowing as makes no difference.

Maybe she’s right. Maybe it _is_ enough. For the time being, at the very least.

Actually thinking about it, perhaps the most _concerning_ revelation at play here is that he does indeed subconsciously trust Bart not to murder him. So much for his hard-earned (though as Todd would say ‘questionable’) survival instincts. When on earth did _that_ happen?

“Bart?”

“Yeah?” She mumbles around a spawful of slush.

“Are we… friends?”

She blinks at him, slowly, removes the utensil from her mouth with a _pop,_ and matter-of-factly declares: “Yep.”

“...Oh.”

“Yeah. You’re my-” she counts on one hand, mouthing the numbers to herself, then triumphantly brandishes three fingers at him- “third best friend.”

“Third?”

“I like Ken ‘n Panto better.” She shrugs. “But I guess you’re okay.”

“Charming,” he huffs, ducking his head and smiling a little to himself. Well, having only learned of this friendship a minute ago, third best isn’t bad going. “I would say you’re my- let’s see, Todd, Farah, Mona, Amanda, Tina, Hobbs… you’re my seventh! I…” His smile widens, stretching his cheeks to the point of aching. “I have seven friends.”

Seven whole friends. Seven whole friends that he loves, that he trusts- who love and trust him in return. Seven whole friends who give him no reason to doubt their friendship, not anymore.

Best revelation of the night, bar none.

Bart interrupts the lovely moment with a snort. “‘Kay, quit braggin’. I bet my friends are better.”

“Whatever keeps you sane.” He taps the sides of his half-drained cup, smiling at the muddy blend of colours, and holds it out towards her. “To friendship.”

She squints at him. “What you doin’?”

“It’s a toast?”

Her eyes widen, voice pitching up excitedly. “You’ve got _toast?!_ Where?”

“No, it’s- it’s _a_ toast, it’s… sort of a celebratory ritual, I suppose. Look.” He- _carefully-_ picks up her wrist, bringing her cup to his, and ‘clinking’ them together with a hollow plastic scrape. “Cheers! To friendship!”

“...That’s dumb.”

“It’s much better with glasses. Ooh!” He springs to his feet and bounces on his heels, holding out a hand to her. “There’s an all-night diner down the road- we could get milkshakes! _Much_ better for toasting, I’m sure.”

“Can we get real toast?”

“I don’t see why not!”

“Huh. Okay,” she rumbles, choosing not to take his hand and instead shoving her cup into it while she pulls herself to her feet. “I like toast.”

He grins, passes her cup back when she's back on her satin-clad feet, and follows her into her car of the week with a spring in his step. “Me too, old chum,” he says, fondness seeping into his tone as he climbs once more into belly of the beast. “Me too.”

 _Well._ He’s already decided with his subconscious mind that she poses no threat; might as well let his conscious mind enjoy it!

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> If you enjoyed this, maybe consider dropping me a comment or reblogging the [tumblr post](https://dont-offend-the-bees.tumblr.com/post/645452136706129920/twinkle-twinkle-little-star-how-i-wonder-what-and)\- while hand pain and a lack of motivation has played a big part in my decreased posting over the last year or so, the decrease in fandom engagement with content hasn't helped either. Comments let creators know they're appreciated, and reblogs spread our work to other potential readers <3
> 
> Anyway, that's all from me for now- hopefully you'll see some more bits and pieces from me soon!
> 
> Until next time <3


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